Abstract
Principio y fin marks the convergence of the two central themes Arturo Ripstein and Paz Alicia Garcíadiego had already begun to develop in their previous collaborations: the deconstruction of the mother figure (La mujer del puerto, 1991) and masculinity, specifically the figure of el macho (El imperio de la fortuna, 1986). Through these themes, Principio y fin undoes the traditional tropes of melodrama while it focuses on a struggling middle-class family as it grapples with the failures of Mexican modernization and the hollowness of the middle-class dream. In this chapter, building on Julianne Burton’s classic definition of the Mexican melodrama and how it affirms the values of a patriarchal system, I focus on how Ripstein and Garciadiego subvert the genre to break down the traditional myths it has constructed about mothers, maidens and machos.
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Notes
- 1.
Arturo Lozano Aguilar, “Principio y fin. Del funeral al infierno,” in El cine de Arturo Ripstein: La solución del bárbaro, ed. Rodrigo J. García (Valencia: Ediciones de la Mirada, 1998), 59–74.
- 2.
Julianne Burton, “Mexican Melodramas of Patriarchy: Specificity of a Transcultural Form,” in Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical Perspectives: Hispanic Issues 15, ed. Ann Marie Stock (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1997), 189.
- 3.
Burton, “Mexican Melodramas of Patriarchy,” 207.
- 4.
“[a]unque la ley patriarcal no dependa exclusivamente del género masculino, no podemos pasar por alto cómo en Principio y fin la posición del padre es continuamente minada.” Lozano Aguilar, “El cine de Arturo Ripstein,” 60–61. All translations are by the author unless stated otherwise.
- 5.
Burton, “Mexican Melodramas of Patriarchy,” 190.
- 6.
Burton, “Mexican Melodramas of Patriarchy,” 207.
- 7.
Opera is first heard when Guama, the oldest son, plays one of his dad’s favorite recordings, Puccini’s Rigoletto , when he is left alone to pay his respects to him right after his body has been prepared for viewing. He later sings an aria from the opera in his father’s honor at the club where he works, and ends up getting beaten up as a result. When Mireya loses her virginity to the boy who works at the bakery across the street, the drama and emotion of the moment are accentuated by the soundtrack of an aria from Rigoletto. The music imbues the experience with excess and operatic pathos and, through its direct connection to her father, reminds us of the tragic consequences of his death for the entire family and suggests the hopeless future that awaits her as a result.
- 8.
Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); Elsaesser, “Tales of Sound and Fury: Meditations on the Family Melodrama,” in Movies and Methods, ed. Bill Nichols, vol. II (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 165–189.
- 9.
Lozano Aguilar, “El cine de Arturo Ripstein,” 67.
- 10.
“Aquí la cámera adopta un papel descriptivo en vez de un papel expresivo o enfático…. De igual manera, la banda sonora obedece a razones diegéticas o presenta una función de contrapunto respecto a la temática. La música se aparta de la utilización frecuente en muchos melodramas como significantes reiterativos de la apasionada sentimentalidad de los personajes.” Lozano Aguilar, “El cine de Arturo Ripstein,” 67.
- 11.
“La que rompe sin querer el ordenamiento previsto es Mireya, por una alquimia rara entre la voracidad por el dinero y la ansiedad de los amores frugales y fugaces, voracidad y ansiedad que son el producto del sórdido ambiente familiar.” Paulo Antonio Paranaguá. Arturo Ripstein: La espiral de la identidad (Madrid: Cátedra: Filmoteca Española, 1997), 238.
- 12.
Elsaesser, “Tales of Sound and Fury,” 182–183.
Bibliography
Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
Burton, Julianne. “Mexican Melodramas of Patriarchy: Specificity of a Transcultural Form.” In Framing Latin American Cinema: Contemporary Critical Perspectives: Hispanic Issues 15, edited by Ann Marie Stock, 186–234. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1997.
Elsaesser, Thomas. “Tales of Sound and Fury: Meditations on the Family Melodrama.” In Movies and Methods, edited by Bill Nichols, vol. II, 165–189. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985.
Lozano Aguilar, Arturo. “Principio y fin. Del funeral al infierno.” In El Cine de Arturo Ripstein: La Solución del Bárbaro, edited by Rodrigo J. García, 59–74. Valencia: Ediciones de la Mirada, 1998.
Paranaguá, Paulo Antonio. Arturo Ripstein: la espiral de la identidad. Madrid: Cátedra: Filmoteca Española, 1997.
Principio y Fin. Directed by Arturo Ripstein. By Paz Alicia Garcíadiego and Naguib Mahfouz. Performed by Ernesto Laguardia, Bruno Bichir, Julieta Egurrola, Lucía Alvarez. Mexico: Séptimo Arte Distribución, 2008. DVD.
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Connelly, C. (2019). Mothers, Maidens and Machos: Demolishing the Myths of Mexican Melodrama in Principio y fin (1993). In: Gutiérrez Silva, M., Duno Gottberg, L. (eds) The Films of Arturo Ripstein. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22956-6_14
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